Social media – like word of mouth, but on steroids

September 21st, 2009
Author: Ryan Leeds

To illustrate the power of social media, let’s take a trip back in time. All the way back, to 2006. Remember, we’re talking social media here, so things move pretty quickly. In 2006, I went to a restaurant that shall remain nameless to protect the not so innocent. It was a local establishment claiming to have the best Buffalo wings around. They had just opened up and their ads were popping up all over town. The owner himself was right there on my TV night after night talking about his “world’s best” wings. Supposedly he employed some kind of secret sauce that had not yet been discovered by man. I like wings, so this piqued my interest. A secret sauce? This was gonna be good.

So, I went in and I can tell you one thing. There was a reason that sauce had remained unfound. It was terrible. Not only that, but the service stunk too. The whole experience made me really angry. The owner had lied to me. I immediately started telling people about how bad this place was. I told my brother, my wife and my friend Ed, who all vowed never to go there again. This was a shame because Ed can put back some wings, and my brother is a really good tipper. At the end of the day, I had convinced maybe four people that they’d be better off staying home. Take that, Mr. World’s Best Wings!

Fast forward, to today. If I were to have that same experience today, things would have gone much differently. I would put the bad review on my Facebook page and my Twitter feed. I would write a snarky review on Yelp and Urban Spoon. I might even blog about it. Within minutes, I would have told literally tens of thousands of people about my bad experience. I would be a hero of the people, exposing this restaurant’s wings on a mass scale for what they really were.

You see, social media is like word of mouth, but on steroids. It can give tremendous power to an ordinary guy like me. Or, like your ordinary customer. Are you paying enough attention?